Amnesty International’s (((Demand Dignity))) campaign will initially focus on a few key areas and patterns of human rights abuse which show particularly sharply the interplay of deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voices ignored. The overall goal is to end the human rights violations that keep people poor.
Human Rights = Less Poverty
The global economic crisis is driving millions more people into poverty and placing them at increased risk of human rights violations such as food insecurity or forced eviction. The world urgently needs a different kind of response and a different kind of leadership if we are to reverse this dramatic escalation of human misery.
This is a human rights crisis. Billions of people are suffering from insecurity, injustice and indignity around the world. The solution can only be found through a coordinated and concerted response rooted in human rights and the rule of law. This requires strong leadership.
Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign aims to end global poverty by working to strengthen recognition and protection of the rights of the poor. The campaign will demand the leadership, accountability and transparency that are essential to end the human rights violations that keep people poor.
This is a campaign about all rights. It is the combined abuse of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights that drives and deepens poverty. By demanding dignity we are demanding that all states adopt and implement the laws, policies and practices that will end deprivation, insecurity, exclusion, and voicelessness.
Participation and involvement in the decisions that impact on our lives are essential to human rights. By including all rights holders in policy making governments are at once creating a framework for accountability, transparency, inclusion and empowerment. These are the prerequisites to ending poverty.
The Demand Dignity Campaign will put rights at the centre of poverty eradication, and make rights protection efforts work for all people. The stories and solutions that people living in poverty have to tell will be the centrepiece of this worldwide mobilisation. Together we will amplify their voices and demand effective responses from political leaders.
The aims of the campaign
- Demand Dignity HUMAN RIGHTS = LESS POVERTY
In this digest Amnesty International presents an overview of the aims of the campaign. To protect the rights of those who live in slums, to end the needless deaths of women from complications in pregnancy, to ensure corporate actors pay due attention to the rights of those in poverty, world leaders must move from acknowledgement to action. Three underlying areas that have traditionally blocked progress must be addressed: accountability, access to rights and active participation.
The main issues of the campaign
Maternal mortality
- Maternal health
Discrimination underpins and exacerbates poverty. Gender-based violence and exclusion are all-too-common contexts in which discrimination keeps people poor and makes them poorer. Maternal mortality, with one woman dying needlessly every minute, is perhaps the most compelling illustration of how violations of women’s rights are both a cause and consequence of poverty. Involving and enabling women in the decisions that affect their lives, giving them the information and power needed to make decisions on their own reproductive rights, and providing them with the health care they need are all essential to ending maternal mortality.
Slums
- Slums
Over one billion people live in slums around the world. Poverty is chief among the factors that contribute to the enormous numbers of people living in slums. People living in informal settlements are generally denied their right to adequate housing and other essential services including schools and hospitals. Slum dwellers are usually excluded from decision-making processes that impact on their lives and rarely enjoy full legal protection. The lack of security of tenure and widespread forced evictions sustain and deepen poverty and deprivation among slum dwellers. As an initial step to address the exclusion and deprivation faced by those living in slums, Amnesty International is campaigning for an end to forced evictions.
La responsabilité des entreprises
- Corp Accountability
The abuse of human rights by corporations engaged in the extractives industry has a disproportion and often discriminatory impact on the poor. Extractives projects cause environmental degradation and have other impacts on the right to land and livelihoods in ways that have long-term and irreparable negative consequences. Communities are often excluded from decision making. Through the Demand Dignity Campaign we will be calling for the protection of affected rights holders in specific country situations. We will also be campaigning for G20 countries to adopt strict rules to regulate companies’ operations at home and abroad.
